“We Are Fannin is on full display tonight,” Fannin County High School Principal Scott Ramsey told the graduation night crowd that filled the high school football stadium Friday, May 19.
The home side of the stadium offered standing room only to family and friends gathered to watch Class of 2023 graduates receive their diplomas.
And what does We Are Fannin mean, Ramsey asked, followed by his answer, “We are all in this together.”
He said the graduates’ education started in pre-K or kindergarten and was all about to culminate in a few minutes. Ramsey told how every job along that path is to teach or support those who teach.
The principal then turned his attention to the graduates.
“The biggest part of their story is about accomplishment,” he said, remembering how March 13, 2020, they were all sent home, only to be brought back to a “new normal.”
Yet the Class of 2023 took “the difficulty of a pandemic as its opportunity to thrive.”
After pointing to many accomplishments in sports and extracurricular activities, he concluded with academic success that had been achieved, witnessed by the fact 61percent of the graduates earned either the Hope or Zell Miller scholarship. Combined with an addition $991,652 in various other awards, the scholarship total earned by the Class of 2023 is $1,823,631.
“Always stay true to your character,” he told the graduates.
Prior to Ramsey’s address, Valedictorian Sam Jabaley and Salutatorian Caroline Stewart had words of encouragement for their classmates.
Jabaley talked of how his own, early failures on multiple gifted tests created his own “relentless desire to succeed.” Mirroring that, he told his classmates, “I know our graduation today will not be the peak of the mountain.”
Talking of how she did not really know what she was going to say before the graduation ceremony, Stewart said, “It didn’t really hit me until this moment...It is our moment to shine...It isn’t just our moment, it’s God’s moment, too. He made it happen.”
She continued to give credit to God, telling how her experience working in a second grade classroom through the school’s work based learning program solidified her belief she should be come a teacher. “I found a purpose...a wholeness that can only be given by God.”
Stewart encouraged her classmates to listen to what course God would set for them. “Seek out your purpose,” she said, and find out why He has set you on that course.